This newspaper has a history of not endorsing a candidate for election, with a single exception during the past 22 years.
But we don’t feel constrained to stay silent regarding the election on Tuesday of a Lumbee tribal chairman. Too much is at stake.
While we won’t petition in favor of a candidate, we will submit that the election of Raymond Cummings could delegitimize a government that for nearly two decades has struggled to achieve credibility with those it was created to serve, but today finds itself farther down that road than ever before.
Don’t dare suggest we mind our own business. The Lumbee Tribe depends on our tax dollars, and the fate of more than 50,000 people in this county affects us all.
We won’t bring forth in detail all the Cummings’ abuses of his position as chairman of the Robeson County Board of Commissioners. At this point they aren’t even in dispute, but here are some prompts — pay and benefits; Angel Exchange; late payment of taxes; Tax Office firing; county housing HUD debacle; manipulation of hiring decisions; exploitation of Noah Woods; and on and on.
Cummings’ behavior in recent months has become increasingly narcissistic and damaging, enough so that we wonder if he is unraveling. He is a man on a island, someone whose quest for more power is robbing him of what power he now has. We know there is a struggle within the local Democratic Party to put in the seat of late Commissioner Berlester Campbell his wife, Pauline, as a way to keep Cummings in power.
We expect that will fail and soon enough Cummings will become no more than a dissenting voice on the Board of Commissioners.
The nail in Cummings’ coffin as it relates to Tuesday’s vote should not be our words, but his own. We are increasingly confident that we will receive permission to publish the audiotape of a phone conversation he had while trying to solicit support for the chairman’s race, the highlights of which have been published in this newspaper already.
The person with whom Cummings spoke has been outed on Facebook by a former employee of the tribe who might be rehired under a Cummings’ administration. So what the person who provided the audiotape wished for, anonymity, is no longer possible.
The timing of the release, on the eve of the election, would be her attempt to get the last word — and the last laugh. It does not matter her motive or if indeed Cummings stepped into a carefully planned trap.
What matters are his lies, and his willingness to double down on them. He wants people to believe one of three things — the audiotape is fake, doctored or taken out of context; it is not fake nor doctored, and when you hear the tape you can make your own judgment about the context.
Spoiler alert: Cummings needs very little prompt when he brings forth his lies. He reads them like a script.
Even those who are willing to consume Cummings’ Kool-Aid will find this audiotape hard to dismiss. We know there are some who will never be convinced — and are in need of a job. But we trust there are not enough voting tribal members to give this man the keys to the bank.
Cummings, more than anyone else on that eight-member board, has stained this county with a reputation as being corrupt, divided by race, and hopelessly adrift. The Lumbee people cannot allow him to destroy what they have built.